In todayâ€™s Hornet mini-date, I thought Iâ€™d start talking about some of the Data Link (D/L) and Situational Awareness (SA) page fundamentals prior to release. We hope to release into the Open Beta later this month. There is a lot to take in, so letâ€™s get started early. Naturally, there will be introduction videos, academic videos, interactive training lessons, and a manual chapter on this. Letâ€™s talk about some of the elements:

Much like the HSI, you have your TDC relation to bullseye (A/A Waypoint) in the top left corner. In the same manner, you have many of the same waypoint controls like display of the selected waypoint, bearing/distance/time to selected waypoint, and sequence options. If the selected waypoint is visible on the SA display, it appears as a circle with the waypoint number in the center, with north arrow.

In the bottom left corner are your chaff and flare counters. O1 and O2 will come later. Yes, weâ€™ll have option for 120 flares.

When enabled from PB 7, yellow triangle symbols appear along the bearing to air-to-air radar emitters. These have options to be set to off, side, and ID or not.

Green contacts are identified as friendly, red as hostile, and yellow as unknown. This is done through a combination of IFF and NCTR prints.

There are three possible sources of data that can build the SA picture: ownship sensors, other fighters (F/F), and AWACS aircraft like E-2 and E-3 (SURV). These sources are then correlated or they can be toggled on and off from the SENSR sub-level page on PBs 13, 14, and 15. PPLI allows the location and data sharing of networked aircraft.

When only ownship sensors detect a target, only the top half of the HAFU (symbol) is displayed. When only from an F/F donor, only the bottom half is displayed. If both ownship and a donor detect the same contact, then both top and bottom halves of the HAFU are displayed. Contacts only detected by a SURV donor, are smaller in size circle or diamond generally.

When the TDC is assigned to the SA page (indicated as diamond in top right corner), the TDC can be slewed. When placed over a contact, its Mach and altitude in thousands of feet is displayed on either side of the TDC cursor. While hovering over a contact, additional information is displayed in the bottom right corner of the display and this can vary based on its identification. Such data can include: NCTR print, bearing and range from ownship, bearing and range from bullseye, fuel level, callsign, etc.

A small dot on the left side of a green circle indicates it is a donor to the Link-16 network and is sharing data with you. A dot in the center of the circle indicates it is a command and control (C2) asset.

B, C, or D inside a contact indicates it is one of your flight wingmen.

The number shown for red contacts indicates its threat ranking.

A star indicates the track is your L&S target.

More functions will be coming soon, which Iâ€™ll talk about at a later point.

Please remember that this is very much work in progress and very much subject to change.

Data Link / Link-16 / MIDS. This has been a huge undertaking and will take a bit more time to get right, particularly for multiplayer data-sharing and creating a unified picture between clients. We want to get this right.

New IFF system tied to D/L

NCTR tied to D/L

JDAM dynamic launch zone.

Data Card. This wonâ€™t just be a data card but allow you to customize many aspects of your aircraft set up.

Lightening II Targeting Pod

JSOW

Again, I need to emphasize that this is planning and not a promise. Things can certainly change. We try to be open and provide you insight into our planning, but with the understanding that this is not set in stone.

The Data Link (D/L) Situational Awareness (SA) page and new radar functions are making steady progress, so I thought Iâ€™d make another little update using images. This all very much work in progress and subject to change.

The first image shows the radar format on the left DDI with Latent Track While Scan (LTWS) selected and the TDC hovering over a brick. The brick now displays the selected weapon Launch Acceptable Region (LAR) as well as target Mach (left of HAFU) and altitude in thousands of feet (right of HAFU). The next step would be to designate the target as the Launch and Steering (L&S) target and the ability to set a secondary Designated Target (DT2). Along with a hover over contact, you can get additional information up to three contacts in LTWS mode. With MSI enabled, youâ€™ll also then have D/L information available. Once LTWS is done, then weâ€™ll take care of Track While Scan (TWS) mode.

On the right DDI is the SA page five unknown contacts at the top of the page., They are yellow because they have no ownship IFF interrogation (hover over contact and depress sensor hat switch to interrogate). The staple at the top of the HAFU indicates the player has no IFF on a target, but the lower chevrons indicate friendly donor aircraft (F/F) have set the targets as hostile. Once both the player interrogates the contact and comes back negative, then the HAFU would change to red and be a diamond. In this way, the color and top and bottom of the HAFU tell you a lot about the classification of the contact.

In the second image the left DDI now shows a target locked in STT with Non-Cooperative Target Recognition (NCTR) enabled. A successful NCTR print of the target depends on range and aspect angle into the intakes of the contact.

On the right DDI we see that the target is identified as an IL-76 and the star HAFU indicates the STT L&S track. It is yellow because no ownship IFF interrogation has been made. Because the radar is in STT, it is not scanning for other targets. As such, all other contacts on the SA page are from F/F and SURV sources over the D/L. The smaller red triangles are SURV tracks from an AWACS that only the AWACS is seeing. The red lower chevrons with the dot is from a friendly donor (F/F) source.

A new datalink / SA page element was added today to support for SAM threat zones. These are determined before hand and are static indications based on Mission Editor settings. If the unit is hidden it will not appear on the SA display, if it is not hidden, it will display. Just like the real system, this is NOT a dynamic indication based on RWR or any sensors. It simply alerts the pilot of a reported SAM threat that was entered in the mission file before they even took off.

As mentioned in earlier posts, we are at work on a detailed Aircraft Settings capability through the Options, F/A-18C, Special Tab. This consists of two primary elements: Aircraft Systems and Mission Card. Both will allow you to pre-configure the Hornet before flight in both single and multiplayer. As such, you would be able to setup your own aircraft defaults.

Aircraft Systems include all functions that are NOT specific to mission (.miz) file or Mission Computer settings. This includes such items as lights, bingo fuel, various cockpit switches, altimeter, etc. In this way, you can have your aircraft setup just that way YOU want it.

The Mission Card allows you to set up software options for all missions that includes such items as radar settings, countermeasures, AG weapon programs, and navigation settings.

The third element of mission configuration MUST apply directly to the specific mission file or there will conflict between Aircraft Settings and the mission fileâ€¦ these are the waypoint settings. As always, a mission is created with a set of waypoints and properties when the mission is created by the mission designer. For the Hornet though, we are greatly adapting this to account for a much more realistic Hornet waypoint system that accounts for up to 60 waypoints in the database, of which waypoints can be assigned properties of sequence 1, sequence 2, sequence 3, initial point, A/A waypoint, Pre-Planned (PP), or Pre-Briefed (PB). In the Mission Planner, the player would be able to then adjust these if desired on a per-mission basis. We are also looking to making the Mission Planner available in multiplayer.

This will also include a new waypoint user interface that weâ€™ll share a bit later once it is more solid.

This is all deep in development and very much subject to change. We have no release time frame in mind yetâ€¦ it will be released to an Open Beta once we feel itâ€™s ready.

I'll be talking about this much more in the next week or two, but basic JDAM is coming along well. Here is an image of the JDAM in Target Of Opportunity (TOO) mode. This will be in addition to the Pre-Planned (PP) mode. Once the the basic modes are in, we will add the dynamic launch zone indications on the HUD and HSI.

In the meantime, we are shooting for (not a promise) D/L SA page and HARM TOO mode for 27 February.

In parallel, LTWS, Aircraft/Mission Card, and wake turbulence are all progressing well.

I will be away for the next week, so there will be no new updates until next week.

The Datalink and Situational Awareness (SA) Display of the F/A-18C Hornet - Introduction

This week we plan to release the initial version of the MIDS/Link-16 datalink / Situational Awareness (SA) page for the Hornet. This is a basic, introduction video to get you started understanding the system. Later, once the datalink is feature complete, Iâ€™ll create a full academic video, interactive training mission, and an updated manual.

A few notes to keep in mind:

1- This is the initial version with more features to follow like automatic IFF modes, IFF code XP and AI setup, Link-4/HARM/FLIR display options, declutter options, flight ground target markers, basic ROE indications, MIDS voice, and a few more.

2- The logic that determines when a target is own-ship classified unknown, hostile or friendly is determined by an ROE matrix of factors. In this initial release it will be determined by Mode 4, but later we will probably factor in NCTR and SURV.

3- An NCTR print requires an L&S or STT lock, therefore I was unsuccessful in the print attempt. My error.

4- Friendly PPLI data is always fuel state, not range.

5- Later with the TXSDSG, it will be based on flight TGT ground designations, not necessarily WPDSG (it can, but not always).

6- I did not show it, but the static SAM threat rings will be included in the version this week.

7- Sorry for the low energy, Iâ€™m recovering from a cold and Iâ€™m dead inside.

Probably the the most anticipated new feature of the Hornet is the targeting pod. As mentioned earlier, we will start with the Litening pod due to it being used by the USMC and similar to what we already created for the A-10C (hardly a cut-and-paste though). Attached is an image of it in action.

It is important to understand that this is neither an ATFLIR or Litening pod ala A-10C. It is a Litening pod that uses standardized Hornet Mission Computer (MC) data export.

Most of the core AG functions are in the game and working, with the big ones still being worked on being the setting a Target Point via the TGP (critical for AUTO and TOO mode attacks) and, AREA vs POINT tracking . After the initial release, we will continue to flesh out the pod to include AA mode, control pages, and additional functions/symbols.

Our engineer assigned to the pod is working very, very hard on this and we are pushing to release it as soon as possible.